Is it acceptable for a Catholic to have a Buddha shrine?

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jredden92 said:
PS. Thanks for taking what I said out of context 😉
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I didn’t “take what you said out of context”. I just didn’t bother to quote your whole post.

With all due respect, it seems like you started this thread expecting people to say that a Catholic having a Buddhist “shrine” is all fine and dandy, and now you are upset to some degree because people told you it’s not okay and could be harmful. Unfortunately, sometimes the “Catholic Answer” is not one we personally like. When that happens, it’s good to reflect on why the responses are so bothersome, rather than “shooting the messenger” as you seem to be doing.

I’ll see myself out…God bless
 
I’m sorry you felt I was shooting the messenger. I was trying to have some fun. It seems you are right all these replys weren’t what I was expecting. Is there a way to remove myself from my own thread before i realize that I’m not Catholic and become disillusioned. Thanks and peace.
 
jredden92 said:
I think you’re right. Maybe I’m a Buddhist trying to be Catholic and I’m confusing myself.
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You are entering the Catholic Church, so you will be Catholic, trying to incorporate the truths you find in Buddhism, or at least, trying to identify them.

We have to be really patient at the moment. Things will get back to normal, we will get back to Mass, the Sacraments, RCIA, Baptism into the Catholic Church. This is only a fleeting moment in time.
Being Catholic is for eternity 🙂 In the Beatific Vision of God.
 
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Thanks for the encouragement. I just want to be saved because I’m a miserable sinner. And I still believe you can only be saved through the catholic church. I’ve obviously gotten mixed up somewhere with all these negative responses. I hope things will get smoother eventually. Please pray for the conversion of my heart and mind to the one True faith.

Peace
 
jredden92 said:
Thanks for the encouragement. I just want to be saved because I’m a miserable sinner. And I still believe you can only be saved through the catholic church. I’ve obviously gotten mixed up somewhere with all these negative responses. I hope things will get smoother eventually. Please pray for the conversion of my heart and mind to the one True faith.

Peace
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Me too, miserable sinner who would love to be saved and go to Heaven and be in the Beatific vision 🙂 Your conversion is in my prayers and will be in our community prayers this evening .
 
That is a good point I hadn’t thought of it that way before. It seems i’m trying to reconcile Catholicism and Buddhism but I don’t have the brain power lol 🙂 Sorry if I’ve offended anyone with all this.
 
You cannot be Catholic practising a pinch of Buddhism.
Catholicism and Buddhism are completely opposite and not compatible at all!

Buddhism does not know personal God, it is at best ateistic religion.
Meditation techniques you use from Buddhism and other Easter religions can bring you spiritual and mental problems.
That isn’t something unusual because you are emptying your mind. Mind can never stay empty so it has to be full of something. That something is good or bad.
St.Paul says this
For, although we are in the flesh, we do not battle according to the flesh,
for the weapons of our battle are not of flesh but are enormously powerful, capable of destroying fortresses. We destroy arguments
and every pretension raising itself against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive in obedience to Christ
2 Corinthians, 10, 3-5
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You have to fill your mind with Christ, not empty it and try to connect with non personal energy to save yourself and fulfill yourself. That is useless for Christians and dangerous.
You will fill your mind with Christ when you read Bible (for start read just New Testament!), when you pray and think about Christ and his life, when you go to Mass etc. You can pray rosary, that is great for meditation.
jredden92 said:
Thanks for the encouragement. I just want to be saved because I’m a miserable sinner.
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Buddhism is religion of self-salvation. It is religion which didn’t meet Christ.
We are sinners and we will never save ourselves. Christ saved us dying on Cross!!!
You shouldn’t have Buddha shrine in house. Make one to Our Lady or don’t make any.
Read Bible, you can find it online, I posted link in this post and wait until RCIA starts.

Here is document about Christian meditation
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/...th_doc_19891015_meditazione-cristiana_en.html

Don’t be afraid!
 
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Jesus prayer should never be practised without spiritual direction and never suggested to someone who don’t understand what is it.
It sounds like christian mantra to many people and should be used very careful as way of prayer.
Not for someone who is taking first steps in conversion.

Saints Barlaam and Josaphat ARE NOT saints we venerate in Catholic Church.
The story is a Christianized version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show. This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle Persian Budasif ( Budsaif=Bodhisattva ). Still it is of historical value, since it contains the “Apology” presented by the Athenian philosopher Aristides to the Emperor Adrian (or Antoninus Pius).
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Isn’t the Dalai Lama supposed to be the incarnation of Buddha? That already seems stray quite a bit from Christian teaching.

Buddhism is religion. While it may not have quite the same belief system as the big three monotheistic faiths (belief in one God), it is still classified as a religion. I too am troubled by the fact that as a Catholic you would have a shrine to Buddha in your home and practice Buddhism in front of it.
 
Inbonum said:
Saints Barlaam and Josaphat ARE NOT saints we venerate in Catholic Church.
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They were once. They even had a feast day. They were relegated in the ‘Bonfire of the Saints’ in 1969. IIRC the Russian Orthodox Church still venerates them.
 
It is popular legend, we don’t venerate them in Catholic Church now and we don’t live in first centuries of Christianity.
There are hundreds of saints who would be much more better to suggest OP.
OP is converting to Catholicism and don’t need examples which would be confusing and could lead him more away than closer.
 
jredden92 said:
maybe a more to the point question would be is salvation and enlightenment different cultures speaking different languages attempting to explain the same thing.
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I wouldn’t say they are: salvation involves knowing and loving a Person (the Lord); Buddhist enlightenment is realizing you don’t exist and nothing exists. They’re contradictory. Regardless of the claims that Buddhist promoters make that it’s a neutral “philosophy” that “anyone can practice”, Buddhism actually believes in a whole theology that is incompatible with orthodox Christianity.
 
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ReaderT said:
Buddhist enlightenment is realizing you don’t exist and nothing exists.
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Not quite. Things do not exist the way we think they exist. The problem is not the existence, but the way we think about that existence. We think there is water in a mirage. A mirage exists – it is not nothing – but the way we think about a mirage is incorrect.
 
Polak said:
I too am troubled by the fact that as a Catholic you would have a shrine to Buddha in your home and practice Buddhism in front of it.
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Buddhist meditation can be as simple as breathing and counting to ten. Thomas Merton, for one, seemed to find it useful. Zen Buddhists leave out the counting.
 
I think it’s concerning that you think of it as a “shrine.” There’s certainly nothing wrong with admiring a non-Christian philosopher. Basically every theologian draws on Greek and Roman philosophers, for example. But “shrine” has a religious connotation, unless you mean it in a jokey, colloquial way (ie “his office is practically a shrine to the Lakers…”)
 
Are you particularly drawn to the interfaith dialogue? That might be one reason why a Catholic might want to have a statue of the Buddha. At the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu, the Franciscans have this sculpture in their meditation garden. It might be an eastern-looking depiction of Our Lord, but it looks more like a Buddha to me.

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Though I am a life-long Catholic, I am also drawn to learning more about the non-Christian eastern religions and their ways of prayer, but still I don’t think I’d display a statue of the Buddha in my home, unless perhaps someone gave it to me as a gift.

I just finished reading an interesting book, Mystical Journey, by the Jesuit Father William Johnston. He lived and taught in Japan for many years, and became a student of Zen, eventually considered a Zen master. He found that Zen complimented and enriched his Catholic faith rather than drawing him away from it. I know that others disagree, and say that immersing in other religions could lead to syncretism. I agree that we do need keep that in mind when approaching other religions.
 
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Inbonum said:
It is popular legend, we don’t venerate them in Catholic Church now
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Aren’t Sts. Barlaam and Josaphat still in the Roman Martyrology? Unless the Church has removed them, they are still saints of the Catholic Church, and we still venerate them at the very least on All Saints’ Day. I am not aware of them being removed, unless someone can post a source showing that they were removed.

Whether the legend about them is true or not is a completely separate matter. There are dozens, probably hundreds, of early saints who have pious legends about them that may or may not be true. We also don’t know for sure that the saint in question was in fact the Buddha; that’s a scholar’s conclusion based on the legends, which might not be correct and/ or the legend itself might not be correct.

So, if these saints are still in the Martyrology, then when we pray for their intercession, someone in Heaven answers.

Completely separate from Barlaam and Josaphat, it would be fine to reasonably think Buddha, having lived a good life in invincible ignorance, might be in Heaven, and ask for his intercession with God. However, we need to use caution we don’t set him up as an alternative to God, or set up Buddhism as an alternative to Catholicism, or say that both religions are the same or both can be practiced together.
 
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As long as I know they aren’t anymore.
St. Josaphat is but not that one.
 
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